Over the last 17 years the taxpayer-funded Public
Broadcasting Service has presented at least 25 documentaries that bear on the
Arab-Israeli dispute, nearly all of them, including the two that aired in 1993,
damning Israel with distorted or false charges. The latest, The Women Next
Door, ran in August and features Palestinian women charging the Israeli
army with torture and oppression of Palestinians, including the killing of
children. Jewish mothers are seen weeping at the induction of their sons into
the "evil" Israeli army. The pairing of Arab and Jewish mothers as
victims makes clear that the film's villain is Israel, which subverts Israeli
youth into becoming the "oppressors" of the Palestinians.

Here, as in many PBS films, debunked charges are
resurrected to underscore the theme of Israeli villainy. Thus, a Palestinian
woman alleges that exposure to Israeli tear gas caused her miscarriage, an
allegation for which there is no medical evidence. Even the U.S. General
Accounting Office, asked by Congressman Ron Dellums to investigate, rejected
such charges against Israel. The GAO found, among other things, no increase in
miscarriages.1 Despite this, PBS allowed the
charge to be recycled.

Michael Ambrosino's Journey to the Occupied Lands,
which aired in January, was guilty of similar distortions and omissions, as
detailed in the Spring 1993 CAMERA Media Report. Since then, a closer
analysis of the FRONTLINE documentary has revealed additional, more serious
problems, including suppressed facts and even photographic fakery.

The problems begin with the centerpiece of Ambrosino's
film, a long and sympathetic account of the alleged plight of a West Bank Arab,
a Mr. Sabri Gharib, said to be victimized by a ruthless Israeli legal system:

AMBROSINO:
... Sabri grows olives, grapes and fruit trees around his house on a hill just
north of Jerusalem. For 14 years he's been fighting the Israeli government over
a large piece of land that he says was in his family for generations, but was
taken by the Israelis as state land...

SABRI GHARIB:
[subtitles] Every year I've worked this land. I've always been here. I planted
that land before 1967 and over there after '67. I planted those olives in '86,
and these I put in this year. And inside the fence, up there --- it was all
cultivated. But I'm still fighting over that land in the courts.

AMBROSINO: Apparently
the settlers fenced in more land that the government claimed. Sabri's documents
made no difference in court, even though there's an old map of this hill
clearly marked with his grandfather's name.

SABRI GHARIB:
[subtitles] If there were any justice, the government would say, "as long
as the land is registered, then it's yours, no problem." But they saw that
all our papers were in order and they still said it was state land.
...

AMBROSINO: Sabri Gharib,
who had the barbed-wire fence around his house, did win an official decision to
get most of his land back. Every month for the past two and a half years he's
asked the court to enforce the decision. Each time he's told to come back next
month...

No official of the Israeli government was given the chance
to dispute Sabri Gharib's story. No wonder. The case was decided by the Israeli
Supreme Court in 1986, with Mr. Gharib's claims demolished.2 Government investigators who searched the British
Mandate records in London found a deed proving that the land had been bought by
Jewish interests in the 1920's. Even Jordanian records reveal that the property
was Jewish owned  during Jordanian rule the property was controlled by
the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, thus putting the lie to
Gharib's claim that the land had been owned by his family for generations. With
such evidence in hand the High Court concluded that Sabri Gharib "is
nothing but a trespasser who tries to rob land from the state, a land which he
never cultivated nor legally acquired."

After this ruling, Gharib illegally refiled in lower
courts, in 1989 and again in 1991, concealing the fact that the High Court had
already spoken. Upon discovering this, the lower courts threw out Gharib's
action and fined him for wasting their time. Ambrosino's claim that Sabri
Gharib's land was stolen, his claim that Gharib had won in the courts 
both flatly untrue  are a shocking attempt to deceive viewers.

Compounding this deceit, Ambrosino interviewed  at
length  Mrs. Plea Albeck, the official who represented the Israeli
government in this case, but he contrived never to ask her about Gharib's
charges. She later expressed astonishment on learning that the discredited
tales of Sabri Gharib had been a part of the film.

No less deceptive was Ambrosino's interview of a West Bank
town planner who alleged that, by supposedly not allowing expansion of towns or
construction of buildings, Israel has forced the Palestinians to live in
"ghetto" communities:

ABDULHADI:
Since '67 the Palestinians have been continuously preparing plans for
development of towns and villages and submitting them to the authorities for
approval. However, very few, maybe one or two plans, have been approved. What
the Israelis are doing today is that they are drawing their own plans, which
they call development plans, by simply just putting a line around already
built-up areas of the communities which, to us, cannot be explained in any
other form than an attempt to strangulate these communities by preventing their
physical expansion in accordance with their needs and requirements.
...

ABDULHADI: It's first
for the Israelis to enforce their control over the entire situation and also to
make sure that nobody gets out of the limits that they have actually drawn
around these villages which they are trying to turn into a ghetto community.

The fact is, under Israeli rule there has actually been an
unprecedented Arab building boom on the West Bank, thanks to greatly increased
prosperity. Even though the Arab population on the West Bank has one of the
highest rates of growth in the world, the number of persons per home has
consistently declined. For example, between 1985 and 1991 the population grew
by a remarkable 25%, but new homes were built even faster, so that the number
of persons per home actually decreased by 1.4%.3 Even more revealing, on average, there are twice as
many people per acre in the Jewish settlements on the West Bank than there are
in the Arab towns and villages.4 So much for
Ambrosino's Arab ghetto.

The filmmaker is no more reliable in presenting the history
of the region than he is in reporting more recent events; ignoring the record,
he blames Israel for the sorry condition of modern-day Gaza:

AMBROSINO:
... It wasn't always like this. The port of Gaza used to be a bustling
commercial center on the Mediterranean coast, open to the world. Occupation
changed all that... It was citrus that used to be the backbone of the local
economy... Since the occupation, the only direct [citrus] exports allowed go
east to the Arab world via Jordan...

Gaza a "bustling commercial center"? According to
a standard British geographical handbook published in 1943, the port of Gaza
"affords no protection even to small craft, which are beached for safety
during the winter. There are no piers or wharves." The same source points
out that in 1939, when 2,249 ships called at Haifa, and 1,593 called at Jaffa,
and 51 called at Acre, the grand total of ships calling at Gaza was 7.5 Under military curfew during the entire 19 years of
Egyptian occupation, things got even worse. According to a UN official writing
in 1953, "To the newcomer, the Strip has the air of a worn out rural
slum."6

Ambrosino is similarly wrong in claiming that citrus
used to be "the backbone of the local economy," and that no
direct exports of Gaza citrus are allowed. The fact is, thanks to modern
farming methods introduced by Israel, Gaza's citrus production has more than
doubled. During the first year of the occupation Gaza produced just 91,000 tons
of citrus, while in 1990 Gaza's citrus production was 197,000 tons.7
And, while it is true that in the past Gaza's citrus was exported only by the
same government-owned-Israeli firm which handled Israeli citrus, since 1988
Gaza citrus has been exported directly to Western Europe.8

At another point in the film Ambrosino resorts to what can
only be described as fraud. He presents three satellite photographs, allegedly
taken in 1973, 1986, and 1992, which are said to show Jewish settlements in the
West Bank growing like a cancer, progressively crowding out Arab villages:

AMBROSINO:
All over the West Bank, the landscape has changed, so much so it's clearly
visible from satellites. Take this area north of Jerusalem  1973: it's
open countryside with Palestinian villages; 1986: eight settlements have been
founded; and by 1992, there's twelve of them and they've grown.

Ironically, as the narrator utters these words, the alleged
areas of encroachment in the photographs are colored in, indicating, contrary
to Ambrosino's claim, that the changes are not "clearly visible" by
satellite. In fact, Ambrosino's use of these satellite photos is bogus. The
first photo supposedly presents an image of the territory in 1973 showing
"open countryside with Palestinian villages." The credits, however,
indicate that Ambrosino got his satellite photos from the SPOT Satellite Image
Corporation, which didn't exist in 1973, and didn't even launch its satellite
until 1986! Where did the supposed 1973 photo come from? The executive at SPOT
who dealt with Ambrosino confirmed to CAMERA that the earliest photos supplied
by the company date from 1986. The same executive stated that Ambrosino did
purchase three photos, but from only two dates: two photos from June 9 of 1986,
and one from May 3 of 1992!9 Obviously the
satellite images could not have revealed what he claimed. Nevertheless,
exploiting public trust in high-tech visual evidence, Mr. Ambrosino simply told
a low-tech lie.

It is unlikely that the numerous lapses in this film were
inadvertent, since Ambrosino chose as his Senior Researcher Marty Rosenbluth, a
virulent anti-Zionist whose credentials include a long association with Al-Haq,
the self-styled "human rights" group based in Ramallah which is
devoted to mendacious attacks on Israel. Rosenbluth's fanatical personal enmity
toward Israel is a matter of public record. He has repeatedly sponsored ads in
the extremist British journal Return, which is dedicated to the
"right of return" for Palestinians and to the destruction of Israel.
According to the ads bearing Rosenbluth's name Israel is "repressive and
racist...a danger to the entire Middle East and to the whole world...and should
be dismantled."

Rosenbluth, who earned at least $42,000 for his labors on
the film, performed various tasks for Ambrosino, including arranging the
filmmaker's interviews with Israeli settlers. Many of those settlers report
that Rosenbluth misrepresented himself in this capacity, claiming that he was
sympathetic towards Israel and that the film would be fair and balanced. One of
the settlers, David Eichenbaum, recalls that Rosenbluth even asked him to carry
a gun during the interview. Eichenbaum refused, saying he did not normally
carry a gun. Only later he realized that Rosenbluth's intention was to present
him as a gun-toting settler, seemingly prepared to shoot innocent Arabs.

Journey to the Occupied Lands prompted a flood of
complaints from individuals and from organizations such as CAMERA and the ADL.
Ambrosino's rebuttals to his critics are a remarkable window on the producer's
animus towards Israel and anger at being criticized. He repeatedly lectures
them on their refusal to accept the "truth" he has presented. He
writes in a typical reply that he "can understand that the film presented
many facts you found disturbing, but to dismiss it is a disservice to the
truth..." Other responses by the producer accuse the writers of arrogance
and, because they have protested his film, of seeking "to censor an
important, well-researched and thoroughly documented report..." He calls
some of his critics "repugnant" and repeatedly claims that viewers
who criticize his film are trying "to intimidate." Needless to say,
he urges viewers to ignore CAMERA's criticism.

Ambrosino's responses reveal not only his condescending
attitude toward viewers who reject his "truth" but also his fringe
political views regarding Middle East history. In response to the many
complaints about the failure of his film to explain why Israel is in possession
of the West Bank, or to describe Arab aggression against the state in 1967, he
wrote, "Israel's air attack on Egypt was the first act of hostility in
1967  an item agreed upon even by Israeli historians  making Israel
the technical aggressor in 1967." Mr. Ambrosino is apparently unaware that
"technically" Egypt's blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba, an international
waterway, created a state of war with Israel two weeks before the shooting
started. Mainstream historians also cite as causes for the war the removal of
UN peacekeeping forces from the Sinai at the insistence of Egypt, the
deployment by Egypt of 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks into the Sinai, and the
general mobilization of Arab armies accompanied by frenzied calls for Israel's
destruction.

PBS's continuing willingness to fund documentaries that
breach every standard of journalistic ethics not only mocks its own ostensible
purpose to educate and inform the public, it violates Federal statutes that
require "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in programs or series
of programs of a controversial nature." Congressional hearings into the
abuse of taxpayer dollars by PBS may be the only means to expose the long
pattern of bias.

References

1.Israel: Use of US Manufactured Tear
Gas in the Occupied Territories, US General Accounting office,
GAO/NSIAD-89-128

8. Ian Murray, The Times of
London, 12 October 1988; Jerome Socolowsky, UPI, 19 December 1988. Even
Marty Rosenbluth, Ambrosino's Senior Researcher for the film, acknowledged this
point in International Labour Reports, January/February 1990, pp 7-11